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Patients sectioned by unapproved doctors

Chris Smyth

October 30 2012, 12:01am, The Times

Jeremy Hunt told the Commons: “Our latest best estimate is that 2,000 doctors were not properly approved"Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Emergency laws will be rushed through Parliament after it emerged that thousands of patients were sectioned under the Mental Health Act by doctors who were not properly approved, ministers said yesterday.

The almost unprecedented step of emergency retrospective legislation is needed because of embarrassing paperwork errors made more than ten years ago, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, admitted yesterday.

No patients have been wrongly detained and no doctors were clinically unqualified to section them, he insisted. Lawyers at the Department of Health say that all detentions are likely to be legal, but that retrospective legislation is needed to remove any doubt and prevent claims for wrongful imprisonment on a technicality.

An independent review will be set up to discover how the mistake happened, why it…